


Somewhere, a door opens.

by SoftButchCassidy



Category: Destiny (Video Games)
Genre: Vex Guardian
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-06
Updated: 2019-10-06
Packaged: 2020-11-26 02:30:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20922686
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SoftButchCassidy/pseuds/SoftButchCassidy
Summary: Guardian after Guardian, lost to the Vex. Lost in the network. It's impossible to find a way out... or so it was assumed. But what's the cost of freedom from the Vex network?





	Somewhere, a door opens.

**Author's Note:**

> Oberon belongs to my friend Chron, and Robin belongs to my friend Mint!   
So funny story. This all started when the three of us were playing d1 and did that mission where you find Praedyth. The Goblins at the beginning are nonhostile... and you can move them by walking into them. So naturally we started shoving one around, and came up with this whole story for him, which I ran away with and made him into an actual Guardian! So--meet Garreth!

Someday he’d find his Ghost. 

Garreth wandered the Vault. It was cold, his Light so dim, but still there. He viciously kept the fire burning in his chest. 

Where was he now? 

He stopped. He didn’t know where this was. This wasn’t right. This wasn’t familiar. 

How long had he been there? Been trapped here, alone, hiding?

Garreth pressed his hand to the wall and took a shuddering breath. He squeezed his eyes closed and waited.

When he opened them, he was where he had been before.

The memories came back to him.

His fireteam, looking for Kabr, for the missing Warlock--

The Vex finding them first--

His fireteam, what were their names, he couldn’t remember them anymore--

The Vex--

The radiolaria, the smell of the sea, drowning in it, choking on it--

Garreth gasped in a breath.

He wasn’t alive. Garreth was dead.

Fury overtook him again. 

He forgot, always, the memory that he was dead, gone, lost to time and the Vex, that he had been wandering this hellish network. 

This time would be different. He’d get out of here, leave this place.

He told himself that every time. 

Garreth stormed ahead. The simulation molded around him, the data responding to his determination. His Light. Rock shifted, caving in, pathways appearing, opening, the Vex turning their glowing red eyes only to blink out from the force of his fury. He wanted out. 

Something was different this time.

He froze at the shore of a lake. It stretched endlessly, shores of metal and glass.

Floating in the radiolaria was a heap of bones and metal scrap. 

That was him. 

Garreth stared at his own corpse.

It wasn’t, not really. It was a simulation of his body. Perhaps where it was now, or had been, or would be in the future. But it was him all the same. That, he knew. He was dead. Even if his Ghost were to return, to find his body, he doubted she could resurrect him.

And yet… he was thinking all the same. Outside of the simulation, he was nothing but bone and corroded armor. But here, he carried his Light in strings of data.

Garreth twisted the simulation around him again. He closed it off from the Vex, pulled it in close. 

He hadn’t seen this before. He knew it existed, but…

Slowly, he stepped forward. His boot splashed softly in the radiolaria. It hissed and bubbled, but didn’t hurt. Didn’t eat away at him. He was nothing but data now. 

So be it. He still had his thoughts. His mind. His Light.

Garreth waded into the radiolarian lake. He couldn’t feel himself moving, couldn’t feel his body. He didn’t have one.

He approached his own corpse. 

He sank beneath the milky surface before he could reach it.

Garreth could feel the Vex. They were looking for him. He could see them, see everything, but he didn’t look. He had a goal. 

He drew into himself and pulled all his Light together tight. 

The Vex flung into a frenzy as he let fire burst out from himself in the middle of the lake.

It was a blur, a vicious battle. He scorched them with his rage, silently screaming for freedom. He fought.

He won.

Garreth woke up.

He blinked slowly. 

He stared out into a sea of cold, silent mechanical bodies. Streams of coherent thought floated lazily through the ocean. 

Garreth looked up and let himself drift. He floated up, to the surface.

He broke free and water, or oil, or something, he couldn’t be sure, dripped down off of him.

This wasn’t a simulation. He could feel the realness around him, the ripples of reality. 

He was… free.

Garreth looked ahead. There was the shore, sloped smooth metal, leading to a gate.

He started to move forward and froze.

He looked down slowly.

His neck whirred with machinery.

He stared down at four-fingered bronze fingers. 

Garreth couldn’t feel the nausea that surely should have rolled through him as he stared down at his body. 

“His” body. 

He was looking at a Goblin. A shell for a Vex. 

Garreth’s fingers trembled. He waded forward, felt the strange joints of his leg. He was dead, still dead, but he wasn’t--

He was Vex, but he wasn’t. 

He stared at the pocket of radiolaria in the center of his chassis. That was him. He knew it. Garreth was data.

But… but he was alive, still… in a way. He tightened his hands, felt the wires shift and move. He could think, he could feel.

He turned his head to look toward the gate again. He couldn’t smile, without a mouth, but felt delirious joy bubble in him. 

Something clicked in his throat and he heard himself laugh. 

Garreth stepped forward, onto the shore. He watched his metal body settle into its proper orientation and marched ahead into the portal. 

He stepped out into the sunlight, felt it warm on his bronze plating. He reached out to run his fingers over a tree’s leaves.  _ Venus _ .

He laughed again. “Fuck you, Vex,” he said.

**

“Venus sucks this time of year,” Cyril-7 complained as the fireteam slodged through mud and vegetation. 

“Is it ever nice, though?” Robin offered dryly. “Either way, we’ve got a job to do.”

“Yeah, but it sucks,” Cyril grumbled. He kicked a rock and watched it thwack off a tree. “Dumb Vex.”

Oberon-12 held out his hand for his Ghost to hover over. “Well, we’re near the Vault,” he said. “So we should be able to find the source of that signal.”

“Picking up Vex,” Cyril’s Ghost chimed. “Eyes up.”

Cyril grumbled wordlessly and checked that his sniper was loaded. He lifted it to his helmet. “Yep, I see ‘em. Hold on…”

It cracked, and a Hobgoblin patrolling an upper platform crumbled into metal pieces. 

“Got one,” Cyril reported.

“One of how many?” Robin muttered. She shook her head. “Let’s get a little closer.”

The fireteam carefully made their way closer to the entrance to the Vault. They shot down a few Vex as they walked. 

“I’ve got the signal again,” Cyril’s Ghost said. 

“Where’s it at, Zhou?”

Zhouzhou appeared in a shimmer beside the Titan and split her shell to pulse out Light. She reformed and vanished. “Near the door? It’s strange… be careful.”

Cyril nodded to his team. Moving with caution, they headed in that direction.

“More Vex,” Zhouzhou warned.

“Wait, wait,” Oberon’s Ghost exclaimed. “That one, it’s not in a combat mode.”

Cyril eyed the Goblin and lowered his rifle. “Think it’s safe?”

Slowly, they started to approach it. 

The Goblin suddenly jumped and looked toward them. 

Cyril snapped his rifle back up, but then froze in confusion. The Goblin’s eye was glowing bright teal, not ominous red. 

It jolted to its feet. Its hands came together over its radiolarian core. “Guardians?” it asked in a male voice.

“Whoa, whoa,” Cyril said. “Did it just talk?”

The Goblin laughed. It sounded incredulous. It put a hand to its head and leaned back a little. “I’ve been sending out that signal for so long! Oh, thank the Traveler!”

“What in the name of the Traveler are you?” Oberon asked in confusion.

The Goblin straightened up again. “My name is Garreth Watson. About ten years ago, my fireteam and I went into the Vault of Glass searching for Kabr’s lost fireteam. None of us survived. I was lost in the Vex simulations for… I don’t know how long, time isn’t linear in there. Long enough.” It pressed its hand over its core. “I… finally found a way to get out. I just coded myself into the radiolaria. And I’ve been trying to contact anyone from the City for the past… couple months, I think?”

Oberon gasped sharply. “I know that name. Garreth. One of the Praxic Warlocks, went missing after an expedition to the Vault…”

The Goblin waved a hand. “Yep. That’s me. And now I’m a Vex. So that’s pretty weird, huh?”

Cyril stared blankly at the Goblin, trying to process… whatever was going on.

Robin shook her head, apparently baffled. “I… I don’t know if I trust this, Oberon,” she hissed. “How do we know it’s not just a Vex using a dead Guardian’s voice?”

“I can hear you,” Garreth deadpanned. He extended a hand. 

Flames curled over his fingers. 

“I can still use Light.”

It was definitely Light. Cyril’s gun went slack. 

Garreth crossed his arms. “Trust me, this is super weird for me, too. I’m literally a Vex now. Like, I’m me, but I’m not. I just wanna get off this Light-forsaken planet and go home and find my Ghost and see if there’s a damn thing that I can do to not be a Vex anymore without literally dying.”

"I… but… how?" Oberon asked.

Garreth shrugged. It was weird, seeing a Vex shrug. "I died. My Ghost got out, I know she did. But I died in there. Sucked up into the Collective to study Guardians. So I just eventually… kinda just… let myself become one so I could get out. And here I am."

Cyril shook his head, reeling in shock. He looked at Zhouzhou. “Tell Ikora, or something. I… wow.”

“It might be a little hard for me to go back to the Tower, huh?” Garreth sighed. “But I really don’t want to just… I don’t know, live out here with all the Vex. They’re awful for conversation. I… just want to go home.”

Robin inhaled deep and sighed. “Yeah. We can’t just leave a Guardian behind. Vex or not. It’s not right.”

Cyril nodded. “It’s definitely gonna be really weird, but… you’re alive, man. You survived the Vex. If your Ghost is still around, we’ll find her. See what can be done.”

Garreth seemed to slump in relief. “I don’t care if I’m Vex now, I still want to be a Guardian.”

“Well, let’s go get you home, Guardian,” Cyril said.

**

Garreth stared out over the City.

It had changed since he’d seen it last. Bigger, brighter. More beautiful. It was home.

He couldn’t help the feeling that he didn’t quite belong here anymore. But he shoved that feeling aside with resentment. This was his home, his City, and it didn’t matter what he looked like.

“Guardian?”

He turned his head and blinked. “Sunflower? What are you doing up? Thought you were tired.”

Her rounded shell twitched as she looked back at him. “You should get some rest, too,” she said softly.

He slumped forward and leaned on his arms on the rail in front of him. “I can’t,” he grumbled. “I just go dormant now. It’s not sleep.” He sighed and twitched his fingers. “And I only need a couple hours a week. I wish I could just pass out in bed, though.”

Sunflower hovered close and nudged the crown of his head with her shell. “Maybe… meditation will still work?” she suggested. “Exos can meditate. I don’t see why you still can’t.”

Garreth hummed and shrugged. “Yeah. Maybe. Guess it would be worth a shot.” He looked over to her again. “Pretend I’m smiling at you.”

She laughed softly. “I know you are,” she said warmly. “We still have the neuro connection. That hasn’t changed. You’re still you. You’re still my Guardian.”

He reached up to let her hover over his fingers. “I missed you so much,” he murmured. “You were the thing that kept me going in there.”

“And you got out.” She spun her shell. “You’re the cleverest Guardian in the universe! See? You did the impossible! And now we’re together again.”

Garreth laughed. “Yeah! Yeah, you’re right. Y’know, I guess it’s not too bad that I can’t do some stuff. Like smiling. You can’t smile, either, but I know you’re happy.”

“Exactly!” The twitch of her shell was indication enough. “You’ve just got to learn how to express yourself in a new way! You’re still you, no matter what, and I’m always going to be with you. We’re a team.” She sounded determined. “I didn’t care what you looked like when I was trying to find you, and I don’t care now. It’s your soul that matters. And your soul is still the same.”

Garreth drew her close and gently tapped his head to her shell. “Love you,” he said. “You’re the best Ghost in the universe.”

She bumped him back. “And I love you too, Guardian.”

**Author's Note:**

> come stop by my tumblr @lesbianeliksni


End file.
